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"The sound of the orchestra is one of the most magnificent musical sounds that has ever existed" — Chick Corea
Ron Levy Music
Short Bio
Ron Levy began piano lessons at age 6, continued his music education at Orange Coast College, and earning his Masters in music composition at UCLA in 1988.
Ron is a musical director, composer, arranger, pianist, and teacher offering private instruction in piano, theory and music composition. He draws inspiration from everything, especially tacos.
Medium Bio
Composer-pianist Ron Levy has been deeply involved in music from an early age, studying piano from age six, and taking up rock and jazz in his early teens. He attended Orange Coast College, studying electronic music, theory, and composition. He continued his musical training at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was awarded the Henry Mancini Scholarship for the Composition of Music for Motion Pictures and Television, earning his Master of Arts in Music Composition.
Ron has worked in many arenas of music: as dance accompanist for ballet and modern dance; keyboardist in casual and hotel bands; musical director for Teatro Zinzanni; pianist for Grammy- and Oscar-award winner Paul Williams; and much more.
Ron has composed for a wide range of instrumental forces, from solo flute to large orchestra. He received a Meet the Composer grant for Symphonic Suite and has received commissions from South Coast Symphony, Irvine Valley College Symphony Orchestra, and Orange Coast College Symphony. His collaboration with West Coast Wind Quintet led to the creation of several new works, as well as a recording of Levy’s complete works for wind quintet: “Odd Beethoven”, released in 2023.
Very Long Bio
My journey with music began fairly early, with piano lessons starting at age 6 - right around the same time I was introduced to the Beatles.
And these two lines – classical and pop – have run parallel throughout my musical journey.
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My first lessons were in a tiny room inside a little music store that had an enormous (to me) accordion displayed at the front entrance. I don’t remember much about that first teacher, except that we used the Alfred method —and I do remember the little mustachioed man pointing to various items on the staff — and that is where I learned to read music, which ultimately has served me QUITE WELL!
We soon changed to my second teacher Mrs. Hyde, who taught out of her home. Two Steinway pianos side-by-side; very old fashioned Viennese style. She said more than once that her teacher’s teacher’s TEACHER was Leschetizky. She had very white hair.
We moved to Texas when I was 10, and I believe I did not have piano lessons for that year.
We moved again and I finally resumed lessons when we moved to the San Fernando Valley — studying with Nina Marble. I do have a clipping from the newspaper pre-recital.
(Dig the ascot!)
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We moved a little bit south to Playa del Rey ("Beach of the Ocean"?) and I started with Marie Curea in Santa Monica. I was a nervous performer and I remember having the shakes during the Bach Festival at the church in Santa Monica. I still have that program, and it is amazing to see that one of my jazz colleagues out in the world these days is also on that program. My family moved around quite a lot so I didn’t really know anybody for very long then;
That has since changed, fortunately. ​
After I really had Debussy’s First Arabesque down around age 14, I asked my mother if I could quit piano lessons and she surprised me by saying "of course, darling". I had picked up the guitar: blues, rock, jazz, the usual corrupting influences of a 14-year-old. I did teach myself Classical Gas and a Bach Prelude on the guitar.
Once I reached High School is when my years of practice began to really pay off: I could play in a band now!
Deputy
On our family's cross-country journey westward I had picked up a deputy badge in some western ghost town, and schoolmate (now bandmate) Jim Sheehan saw it and said "well let's call the band DEPUTY". We played one gig: a high school birthday party. And, one song: "Birthday" by the Beatles.
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There's those Beatles again.
In high school I realized that the skills that were burned into my fingers would stand me in good stead. I wanted to play music with others and keyboard players were in short supply. The first band I joined played one party and we played the Beatles "Birthday". I actually played guitar in that band. 3 chords.
I was asked to join another high school band (our cross-town rivals). We played "Bodhisattva" and "White Punks on Dope" so I guess those were kind of lost years in a way. Never mind.
Enter Composition
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"Keyboard" meant "synthesizers", and those were becoming widely available so my first composition experience in college was in the electronic music studio, where I spent many late hours.
Yes, the OC Weekly sent in a photographer to capture me at work.
Why? ... we'll never know ...
I took an independent study with my composition teacher Dr. Edith Smith which resulted in my first notated pieces for solo piano. I called them Mookwipps, which sounds silly, but it does have "Moog" sort of in there so I guess that kind of makes sense.
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[UCLA undergrad... [My interest remained with electronic music as] I took the required music history, theory and breadth courses.... I also met my lifelong friend, pianist and really good guy Soichiro Matsumoto. He calls me Lon Revy.
[UCLA grad... I was attracted to the one with the biggest and best electronic music studio — so that meant UCLA AGAIN!. ...but (fortuitously, as it turned out) the first assignment was to write for (wait for it ...)
WOODWIND QUINTET.
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WHAT THE..?!
Well the fact is my first hearing of these instruments up close and personal — BLEW ME AWAY!
The timbres were so rich and way more complex than anything I had heard in the EMS.
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I compose Six Pieces for Woodwind Quintet.
Fast forward, when it came time to propose a thesis project, my professors unanimously said "no! no! no! you must write an instrumental piece". And as it turns out that was an excellent bit of guidance, because my interest in electronic music had waned to the point of extinction at the advent of digital synthesizers, which to me did not have the sound or feel of analog synthesizers at all; whereas meanwhile the sound of acoustic orchestral instruments was completely overwhelming to me in it’s richness and possibility.
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Throughout all those years at university I did learn so much — but there was so much more to be learnt! And to do that I needed to get out of those hallowed (and yellowed) walls, and go into that very famous place, the "Real World".
And that is just what I did.
My first stop:
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ISOMATA
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I had been working with dancers for quite some time (since undergrad at OCC) so my first "real job" as a dance accompanist at Idyllwild school of music and the arts was fitting. I really studied hard to be a good dance accompanist; read every book I could find on the subject. Which was basically one. One book. Pathetic.
I had to figure it out on my own. (One day I may write such a book myself, or at least a compendium of my personal experiences)
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I also, naturlich, took every opportunity to compose my own music. First by writing the score to a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night for the Theater Department, which was a lot of fun!
I also composed a fanfare for the graduating class at the end of my first year there, which I entitled Zephyr Dance. Why Zephyr Dance? Because Madeleine Zephyr Dance was too long!
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The instrumental forces at the Academy were not really consolidated yet so the instrumentation for that short piece is unusual to say the least — but it works.
In the second of my five years at ISOMATA low and behold the wonderful young conductor who had conducted the reading of my masters thesis at UCLA, Jung Ho Pak, was hired as conductor of the International Chamber Orchestra (they got fancy) at ISOMATA.
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Jung Ho was a great collaborator and champion of new music; he commissioned two chamber symphonies from me, as well as a unique and hard-to-categorize work (he called it a Happening) for chamber ensemble, mixed choir, overhead projector, and audience participation (see what I mean?), entitled "Nice Shirts" (even the title is weird!)
[montage of images from nice shirts, incl. flyers and portrait of jung ho]
Seeing as nothing was left for me to do after THAT extravaganza, and that after all this time I STILL could not get through a single standard tune by memory, my focus abruptly shifted towards commercial music — JAZZ in particular.
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From JAZZ to NOW
[...] then changed for a while so that I could honestly call my self a working musician and I took several years to learn the jazz standards and work in jazz situations back in orange county. I had returned to Orange Coast College where I had started out as a teenager with the electronica music studio aforementioned, but now with the purpose of learning Jazz and I got wholeheartedly into the Jazz program at OCC.
After a little while though I gravitated back towards Symphonic Writing. One of my professors, Alan Remington found out I was a composer as well as a budding jazz pianist and immediately offered to perform anything that I might write. This got that me back into writing concert music resulting in "Breathless".
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[PIC w rem at premiere - I was 12]
And so it goes, ebbing and flowing between the concert and commercial/jazz music worlds. Since that breathless performance I have written a few other orchestral works including Pelican Song, Modigliani's Arm, and portions of a magnum opus work-in-progress originally entitled Flowers and Stones (and it will probably end up that way).
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I also wrote a piece for concert winds, "Who Killed the Red Baron".
[...]
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All along folks would ask me about my piano music and the funny thing is I had never composed anything for solo piano. (Funny because I am a pianist, don;t you know). But that changed when I was approached by Jennifer Eklund to compose pieces for her Piano Pronto publishing company, geared particularly towards piano teachers and featuring works at the beginning and intermediate level.
The process of writing the solo piano pieces that I’ve done so far demonstrated to me that it is actually the best way for me to start a project that might end up as a work for larger forces. For one thing the piano is my first and main instrument and inspires creativity in the best possible way. It is also much easier to create harmony and structure on a grand staff rather than starting immediately with all those instruments and getting bogged down in the details.
Start with a sketch.
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[pic]
You have to start with a good overall basic sketch so now I start all my works as solo piano pieces.
I never did like “third stream” music or any kind of integrating jazz elements into classical, but now that is exactly what I have been doing: taking jazz or pop material and using it as a basis to transform into concert music, having found that those materials are vital and current and very malleable. Plus people can relate to them! Odd Beethoven is my most recent piece utilizing this way of working.
